Alexander Roslin and the Comtesse D'egmont Pignatelli
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Alexander Roslin and the Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli This publication is produced in conjunction with the exhibition “Alexander Roslin and the Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli,” August 29 through November 30, 2008 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The exhibition is made possible with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Exhibitions Endowment Alexander Roslin and the Fund, and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. d The authors gratefully acknowledge Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli the generous support of the following individuals: Arthur Aminoff, Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel, Joseph Baillio, Göran Larsson, Michael Clarke, Mark Evans, Torsten Gunnarsson, Magnus Olausson and Angelica Rudenstine. Project manager: Gayle Jorgens Editor: Jodie Ahern Designer: Kristine Thayer © 2008 by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Minneapolis Institute of Arts 2400 Third Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 www.artsmia.org All rights reserved Printed in the United States Library of Congress Control Number: 2008934352 ISBN: 9780980048414 Cover, this page and inside back cover: details from Alexander Roslin Swedish, 1718–93 The Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume, 1763 Oil on canvas The Minneapolis Institute of Arts The John R. Van Derlip Trust Fund 3 “a rather good portraitist Denis Diderot, 1763 Instructed in the art academies of several European capitals and, from his earliest professional debuts, boldly signing his pictures with the epithet le Suédois—the Swede—Alexander for the times” Roslin was, nevertheless, the consummate French court painter throughout the golden era of Enlightenment portraiture.1 Between his arrival in France in 1752 and his death in Paris a mere five months after the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, Roslin would reign as one of the principal portrayers of the French aristocracy. The nobility of Sweden, Russia, Austria, and Poland were equally enthusiastic in their pursuit of his redoubtable talents. His prodigious output, despite an exceptionally meticulous technique, made him one of the most renowned, and certainly one of the wealthiest, artists in Europe. He was, in a word, the perfect choice to portray one of the most captivating women of their era, Sophie Jeanne Septimanie du Plessis, Duchesse de Richelieu (1740–73; fig. 1), only daughter of Louis François Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1696–1788), the genial companion of Louis XV and the primary rival of the Marquise de Pompadour (1721–64; fig. 2) for that monarch’s favors. FIGURE 1 Alexander Roslin, Swedish, 1718–93, The Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume, 1763, Oil on canvas, Minneapolis Institute of Arts In 1756 Septimanie married Casimir Pignatelli, Comte d’Egmont (1727–1801; fig. 17), himself the progeny of two ancient European houses, the Egmonts of 4 Holland and the Pignatellis of Naples and Aragon. Louis XV witnessed their wedding contract. By 1763, when The Comtesse d’Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume (a portrait now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts 2 ) was composed, both the artist and his sitter were approaching celebrity of a special order. Septimanie de Richelieu, whose mother died within a year of her birth, received a traditional education in a Benedictine convent in Normandy, although her adult values were said to have been entirely fashioned on Voltaire’s liberal polemics. Conversant in the arts, literature, and history, she could recite from memory the Henriade, Voltaire’s epic poem celebrating the benevolent reign of the much-loved French King Henri IV (1553–1610). The countess’s so-called “Spanish” costume, with its slashed, beribboned sleeves, surfeit of pearls, and raised lace “Medici” collar, was a type of fancy dress fashionable for its exoticism, but also for its allusion to the reign of Henri IV and his queen, Marie de Medici. In England the style was known variously as “Van Dyck” or “Rubens’s Wife” costume, and it was popularized in France at mid-century by two paintings of Spanish theme (fig. 3) executed in 1754 by Carle Van Loo for Madame Marie Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777),3 whose legendary salon in Paris was the literary and artistic counterpoint to the Pompadour’s more political and diplomatic gatherings at Versailles. The guitar with which Septimanie shares her fauteuil (armchair) in Roslin’s portrait thus reinforces a Spanish sentiment—her husband was a Grandee of Spain and constantly entertained the Spanish diplomatic corps in Paris—moreover, she was an accomplished performer on that instrument (fig. 4). Her marriage at age fifteen to the older and more seasoned Comte d’Egmont was brokered by her father, and although it brought her tremendous wealth and social stature, was more a union of convenience than of bliss. By the time she sat to Roslin, the countess was already universally acclaimed as one of the most perspicacious, glamorous, and spirituelle women of Parisian high society, and consequently both coveted and resented. The slightly junior Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830) later recalled: FIGURE 2 François Boucher, French, 1703–70, Portrait of Madame de Pompadour, 1756, Oil on canvas, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Leihgabe der HypoVereinsbank Madame la Comtesse d’Egmont the younger, daughter of Marshall Richelieu, at whose home I had dined several times with Madame de 7 Montesson, was of a charming figure, in spite of her poor health; she was then about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and had the prettiest face I have ever seen. She had far too many airs, but all of her expressions were pretty. Her spirit resembled her figure; it was mannered yet full of grace. I believe that Madame d’Egmont was simply singular and not affected; she was born thus. She had many great passions; she could have been reproached for a romantic temperament that she nurtured for a long time, but her morals were always pure …. Women did not like her. They envied the seductive charm of her figure; they wouldn’t acknowledge her goodness, her sweetness.4 Unsubstantiated reports of liaisons circulated during and after her lifetime, including one with Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc de Chartres (1747–93), who would become more widely renowned as Philippe Égalité during the French Revolution. At a costume ball hosted in 1767 by the Marquise de Mirepoix, the prize for beauty was unanimously awarded to the countess, whose partner, the Duc de Chartres, “was the only man there worth looking at.” 5 While her noble birth and vast fortune made the countess an attractive salonnière, it was her intimate friendship with the cultivated bourgeois matron of the arts, Madame Geoffrin, that sustained her ascendancy within the elite society of artists and intellectuals known collectively as the philosophes. From about 1750, Madame Geoffrin regularly hosted two weekly mid-day dinners—a literary assembly on Wednesdays (fig. 5) and an entertainment for artists on Mondays. Every poet or painter of consequence clamored to attend these gatherings. The remainder of the week her salon was open to virtually any politician, diplomat, or foreign celebrity who chose to call. Like most Parisian salons, but perhaps even more so given the stature of her attendees, Madame Geoffrin’s was an egalitarian forum for education and erudite discourse. Many of these soirées were followed by her petits soupers limited to a very exclusive party of her confidants. “I am so gay,” she wrote in December 1766 to King Stanislaus II of Poland, “that a company of young ladies of [age] twenty come to see me when they want to be amused. Madame d’Egmont is at their head. She often begs me to give them little suppers.” 6 In another letter to Stanislaus, who had requested a portrait of the countess, Madame Geoffrin amplified her regard for her young protégé: FIGURE 3 Carle Van Loo, French, 1705–65, The Spanish Concert, 1754, Oil on canvas, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg The figure of Madame d’Egmont is charming, but her greatest charm is when she speaks, which she does with a grace that cannot be portrayed, 8 either in painting or sculpture. She has been painted several times, but no portrait renders her well. Lemoine, the famous sculptor, has begun her bust (fig. 22); if he succeeds, I must send you a plaster-cast of it; and I will tell Madame d’Egmont of the desire of your majesty, which will surely flatter her.7 Roslin’s close friend, Jean François Marmontel (1723–99), author, playwright, and secretary to the Director of the King’s Buildings, Abel François Poisson, Marquis de Marigny (1727–81; fig. 6), left a pertinent account of one of these petits soupers, where he often recited for the attentive ladies from his Contes Moraux (1761): The feast was modest. It was usually a chicken, spinach, an omelet. The company was not numerous, at most five or six of her special friends, or three or four men and women of high rank carefully selected and delighted to be with each other…. [This night] a group was formed of three women and a single man. The three women, seated as if goddesses on Mount Ida, were the beautiful Comtesse de Brionne, the beautiful Marquise de Duras, and the pretty Comtesse d’Egmont. Their Paris was Prince Louis de Rohan. But I suspect that on this occasion he gave the apple to Minerva [Madame de Brionne], because, in my opinion, the Venus of this supper was the seductive and piquant d’Egmont. Daughter of Marshall Richelieu, she has vivacity, spirit, the graces of her father; she also possesses, or so it is said, his fickle and libertine temperament; but that is something that neither Madame Geoffrin nor I pretend to know.8 Marmontel further opined that the Marquise de Duras possessed a noble severity more appropriate to Juno and that the Comtesse de Brionne, despite her fine figure and traits, which one might consider an ideal of beauty, lacked the single characteristic required of a Venus; namely, the “voluptuous air” that gave Madame d’Egmont the advantage.